Counterpunch Topic: CounterPunch: Fearless Muckraking or Just Muck?

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Excerpt:

 SEPTEMBER 03, 2018,  BY MICHAEL HOWARD
Earlier this year Diana Johnstone, author of “Fool’s Crusade” and other books, wrote an article for Consortiumnews.com critical of the left’s most self-regarding media outlet, CounterPunch. In it she analyzed the website’s creeping embrace of establishment narratives vis-à-vis Russia and Syria; she also touched on its efforts to legitimize “Antifa” shenanigans. (To its credit, CounterPunch ran a number of counterarguments, a few from Johnstone, attempting to save the “Antifa” enthusiasts’ souls. Alas, these were mostly drowned out by a deluge of screeds from “Antifa” pamphleteers, who seem to comprise a tiny yet ferocious army.) Implicitly, Johnstone announced a split from her erstwhile political ally—she does not appear to have published in CounterPunch since.
Nor could I help noticing that articles written by Mike Whitney, once one of the website’s most prolific contributors, and most dogged critics of US policy regarding Russia and Syria, can no longer be read on CounterPunch. Whitney hasn’t stopped writing—his commentary often appears on UNZ Review—but he has stopped writing for CounterPunch. Coincidence? or a reflection of the shift in editorial preferences delineated by Johnstone? If I cared enough I’m sure I could find out. I don’t.
Years ago, as my own interest in politics deepened, I considered CounterPunchessential reading; I no longer do, and haven’t for some time. True, as Johnstone concedes, they still publish, or rather re-publish, edifying content—Vijay Prashad, Jonathan Cook, Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, others—but between Paul Street’s rambling, cantankerous diatribes against pretty much everyone (Bernie Sanders is one of his go-to targets; he still won’t quiet about him), Andrew Levine’s repetitious meanderings and editor Jeffrey St. Clair’s preening, bullet-pointed weekend column, CounterPunch is basically unreadable...

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